Johns Hopkins Undergrads Are In the Running for $10 Million Prize

If you’ve ever felt kinda funny and turned to the internet for self-diagnosis purposes, you probably ended up with a list of obscure diseases you were convinced you had, plus a panic attack.

There’s got to be a better way, which is where the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE comes in. The competition was launched to encourage inventors to develop a mobile self-diagnosis machine along the lines of Star Trek’s tricorder diagnosis device. To make it worth their while, the backers tacked on an impressive amount of prize money: $10 million. Yes, $10,000,000.00. And a team of Johns Hopkins undergrads are among 30 qualifying teams vying for the award.
The Hopkins undergrads have deemed themselves “Aezon Health,” which at least proves that they’re good at coming up with vague health-care-sounding names. They’re also good at the engineering part of things, too; the wearable device they’ve created an reportedly diagnose 15 conditions ranging from urinary tract infections to pneumonia to HIV, based on vital signs and other data. (Read more about how the thing actually works here.) Finalists will be announced in September; keep your fingers crossed on Aezon’s behalf.
As you might expect, some of the teams they’re vying against have a lot of money, and also aren’t college students. But what the Hopkins team lacks in experience, they make up for in gumption; their crowd-funding campaign on IndieGogo has already raised several thousand dollars. Donate here, if you are so inclined.